How Spencer Pratt Has Weaponized AI Ads in the LA Mayor Race

The former reality TV star's ads may not win the race. But they've changed the game.

First, a confession from a guy who’s made more political television than he cares to admit: far too much American campaign advertising is dull, formulaic, and entirely predictable. I mean, ours isn’t, but we’re a mad monk cult of “Bad liberal X is bad because he’s bad. Bad conservative Y is bad because he’s bad.” Rinse. Repeat. Bill the client.

It’s recursive and boring.

Pratt’s message, delivered with a comic, postmodern AI flourish, is … and I cannot believe I’m typing this about a Hills alum … quite frankly very well done. It’s not an endorsement; it’s an observation.

For a man who has no business being in a close second place to current Mayor Karen Bass, Pratt is doing something politically that Democrats should learn from once they’re done pretending that campaigns will stay the same, forever.

What’s the message? Crime makes the city unlivable. Filth makes the city unlivable. Bureaucracy makes the city unlivable. Kids are unsafe. You are unsafe. Decline is a choice. The ads themselves are the campaign. There is no campaign apart from the ads.

And that’s OK.

And what ads they are. Picture this: an AI-generated Gotham-grade dystopia where

the Hollywood sign and City Hall are on fire. Karen Bass appears as the Joker, flanked by Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris as a kind of progressive Legion of Doom meets Versailles.

Masked agents in vests labeled “DSA” drag a woman in front of the elites as she begs about homeless drug addicts in front of her kids’ school — and the elites laugh. An AI Marco Rubio shows up as a DJ. Tomatoes fly. “LA is worth saving” hits the screen.

Be honest: the ads are memorable in a sea of the forgettable. They’re transgressive in a sea of cautious, focus-grouped twaddle.